


Samhain

by MaryPSue



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 12:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2692313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Samhain was seen as a liminal time, when the spirits … could more easily come into our world."</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Sandy meets the ghost the first night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Samhain

**Author's Note:**

> This was based off of a prompt for the Blacksand Halloween event on tumblr.

The house is vast, much too much for one person, a real old Victorian mansion with white columns and gingerbread carvings gracing its dilapidated face like the pearls around the throat of a regal old lady, ravaged by time but still proud, and elegant as the day she made her debut.

Sandy shouldn’t buy it.

He does anyway.

…

He meets the ghost the first night.

The day had been frantic, busy and thick with movers and contractors and problems Sandy needed to solve, and he’d dropped into bed exhausted and fully expecting to fall asleep at once and sleep straight through until about noon the next day.

Things hadn’t gone quite as he’d expected. Instead, without the bustle and frustration of the movers getting underfoot every time he turned around, Sandy found the house seemed a lot bigger than it had in daylight, its rooms all vast and empty, his things in crates and packed in plastic reduced to vague, menacing shapes in the dimness. The house was, after all, much too much for one person, and Sandy lay awake in the cold of the master bedroom, staring at the stripes of icy moonlight thrown through the narrow windows that he hadn’t thought to hang curtains in, lying like patches of mercury across his bed and crossgrain to the hardwood floor. Every shadow seemed darker in contrast, everything left out of the moonlight nothing more than faint suggestions, patches of deeper dark in the dim greyish night.

He had wished, vaguely, that there were someone else there with him, and, rolling over, closed his eyes.

He is wakened by a cool brush of air at his forehead, like that left by the passage of a hand close by. His first thought is that he’s left one of the windows ajar, or perhaps that one of them is cracked, and he’ll have to have it reglazed when he starts work on the renovations.

His second thought is that the moon has vanished, but there is still a source of light in the room.

The ghost is not so much insubstantial as impossibly distant, and he glows as though a bright light is shining on him, rather than from him. His bearing is proud, his pale face long and elegant with strong aquiline features, his clothing antiquated and drenched in gore. Blood spatters the side of his face. Sandy can’t see any wounds in the dimness, and thinks that maybe that’s for the best.

Sandy isn’t frightened. Despite appearances, the ghost isn’t frightening. He simply hangs in the air at the foot of the bed like a projection on smoke, watching Sandy with eyes that are little more than a faint glitter in dark sockets, yet which still somehow manage to convey a look of impossible sadness. Sandy thinks that maybe he should be screaming in terror right now, but instead, he feels like sobbing.

He reaches out a hand, and the ghost is gone, as though he were never there, the light that had illuminated him vanishing with him.

…

Sandy wonders if he’d dreamed it.

It certainly seems absurd, in the swell of early morning sunlight that sweeps in through the thick-paned glass of the kitchen windows like golden syrup, slow and thick and lazy, and spills around the small room with its outdated appliances wedged in with true antiques, the avocado-coloured fridge and wide 1950s stove next to the cast-iron pot-bellied stove that must have been part of the original house. Sandy idly considers whether he should keep it when he renovates as he finishes his orange juice and rinses out his glass. He wants to stick as closely to the original building plans as he can, but there isn’t much space in the kitchen to begin with, and the pot-bellied stove takes up a lot of it.

He turns around, and the ghost is sitting at the butcher’s-block table, staring at him. The morning light renders the ghost little more than a sketch in highlights, the places where whatever otherworldly light that illuminates him falls on him glowing white and the shadows vanishing, so that Sandy can see half of the doorway through the ghost’s chest.

They watch each other for a long moment. Then Sandy blinks, and the ghost is gone.

…

Sandy finds the ghost when he goes to the library in search of the original blueprints of the house. Or, rather, he finds the man the ghost used to be. Kozmotis Pitchiner was thirty years old when his house was broken into and his wife and daughter stabbed and left to bleed to death while they lay sleeping. He woke up when his wife screamed, tried to fight off her assailant, and was stabbed thirteen times. He and his family warrant little more than a brief paragraph in the history of the house.

Sandy studies the portrait reproduced in the book, the strong aquiline features, the proud tilt of the chin, the challenging dark-eyed stare, piercing even in a blurry black-and-white reproduction of a miniature. He was handsome, Sandy decides, thinking of the glimmer of eyes sunk in invisible sockets, the spray of blood across one cheek. He _is_ handsome.

Sandy takes the book to the library photocopier, and pays twenty-five cents for a reproduction of the reproduction of Kozmotis’ portrait. He spends the rest of the afternoon poring over the house’s original blueprints, trying to decide what to restore, what to recreate, and what to replace.

…

The ghost appears at his dinner table that night, watching Sandy eat sausage and potatoes with an expression rather like longing. At last, Sandy gets up to make up another plate for the ghost - after all, even if he can’t eat, enough cultures make offerings of food to the dead that Sandy feels sure somehow that this is the right thing to do - but when he turns back to the table, the ghost is gone.

Sandy leaves the plate at the empty place at the head of the table anyway, and is careful to place the cutlery according to the rules of etiquette he only half remembers.

The page with its short, dry description of a horrifying mass murder and a dead man’s likeness crinkles in his pocket.

…

The photocopied page stays in Sandy’s pocket.

It accompanies him on meetings with contractors, electricians, and plumbers, to the bank and the insurance agent, to the courthouse, and back to the library, where he trawls through old newspapers for any more fragments of Kozmotis’ story, anything he can piece together. It waits quietly through every meal where he sets a second place, through long evenings in the study where Sandy pores over his investment portfolio and wishes, he can’t quite say for what. It sits on Sandy’s nightstand when he goes to bed, beside the clock, bathed in the red wash of its glowing numbers.

The ghost is not constant, not predictable, appearing without rhyme or reason just when Sandy least expects him. He never speaks, never does anything but stare, but after his sudden appearances and disappearances stop making Sandy jump, Sandy starts to talk to him. He tells the ghost about his days, about his plans for the house, about his father and mother back in Alaska and his friends in Portland and Austin and San Francisco, about his favourite foods and books and how much he loves cats despite being allergic.

He isn’t sure, but he thinks the ghost’s stare softens, sometimes.

…

Sandy wakes.

The clock blinks a brilliant _02:59_ into the darkness of the room, where Sandy has finally remembered to hang curtains. Its dim red glow doesn’t touch the ghost, who looks more solid than any time Sandy has seen him before. Perhaps it’s the darkness, allowing whatever spectral light illuminates him to show him most completely. Perhaps he really is growing more substantial, more real, with the presence of someone else in his house.

Sandy smiles, and to his surprise and wonder, the ghost smiles back.

Just as he did that first night, Sandy reaches out, and this time, the ghost doesn’t disappear. Instead, he places a hand over Sandy’s, like a breath of cold air, casting no shadow.

Sandy tries to think of something to say, but nothing comes to mind. So he says nothing. He doesn’t think the ghost, who never speaks, can much mind.

He falls asleep, eventually, with his hand wrapped in cool presence and a dead man smiling down on him.

…

The attic is the last floor left to renovate.

Sandy has left it, intentionally, until last, even though it might have been easier to tear the entire house up at once, because it is still packed full to the brim with things that previous owners have left behind, and he has no idea what to do with them. It had seemed odd when he was buying the house, but it had enchanted him too much to care about why previous owners might have left their things. Now that he’s up there, though, he’s wondering again. Had the others met the ghost as well, and seen the blood but not the sad eyes?

He rolls up the sleeves of his old, paint-stained sweatshirt, the one he got from the art school he’d only been able to attend for one semester, and reaches for the nearest cardboard box.

It takes him hours to work his way halfway through the attic, sorting everything into seperate boxes to keep, to sell, and to throw away, and in that time, he discovers that he’s working his way backwards through time. More and more things end up on the ‘keep’ or ‘sell’ piles as the cardboard boxes start to give way to wooden chests and old suitcases, filled with antiques. Sandy finds a hatbox that contains a top hat made of genuine beaver, in almost perfect condition, and a suitcase full of ladies’ white silk gloves, a little yellowed and smelling of mothballs, but otherwise in perfect condition. He sets the hat on his head, and brushes cobwebs and what looks like decades of dust from a full-length mirror, only to see the ghost standing directly behind him in his reflection.

Sandy turns, smiling, but the ghost doesn’t meet his eyes. Instead, the ghost’s gaze is fixed on the top hat perched on Sandy’s head, and a faint frown puckers his forehead, almost as though he’s thinking hard, trying to remember something.

"This wasn’t _yours_ , was it?” Sandy asks, doffing the hat and holding it out in front of him, looking at it with new eyes. The ghost only tilts his head slowly, one way and then the other, considering the hat carefully.

After that, Sandy’s progress slows to a crawl. He can’t help stopping to examine each new find, to wonder whether this was something that Kozmotis owned, used or wore, had some sentimental attachment to that might draw his ghost out of whatever silent distance he’s retreated to. He makes a show of every new find, holding it up on display for the ghost, babbling about each article like an amateur auctioneer. The ghost never shows any sign of recognition, only that furrowed brow and thoughtful stare, but it doesn’t keep Sandy from trying.

He’s stopped in his tracks for a moment by a locked secretary desk, and hunts for the key, finding it at last in a china teacup full of nuts and bolts. He’s so busy trying to make certain that he’s got the right key, that he isn’t going to break the lock (which is sticky with age) by forcing it, that he doesn’t notice until he’s already putting down the top that the ghost has gone stiller than usual and that his look of concentration has turned to pure, unadulterated horror.

Sandy looks down, but doesn’t see anything about the desk that ought to cause such a reaction. He carefully shuts the top, but when he turns back, the ghost is already gone.

…

Sandy tries to put the desk from his mind as he cooks supper, as he sets the customary two places, but the ghost doesn’t appear and he can’t help but think of the reason why. He goes to bed that night and can’t sleep, lying awake and trying not to look for the faint graveyard glimmer that would mean that the ghost has forgiven him and come back.

His dreams are dark and bloody and full of familiar screams, and he wakes feeling more tired than he did when he went to bed.

He manages to make it until lunchtime before his curiosity gets the better of him. Sandy steals up the steep, narrow stairs to the attic like a thief, feeling an inexplicable guilt settling into the pit of his stomach. He tries to tell himself that he’s doing nothing wrong, that he bought the house and everything in it fair and square, that he can do what he likes with the junk in the attic.

He knows he’s lying.

The drawers inside the desk are all just as stiff and sticky as the top was, and he struggles with trying to get them to roll out once they’re unlocked. He finds documents, letters written in an elegant, confident script, some from various solicitors and bankers, a thick wad from someone named Harker, several drafts of what looks like a will, bills with the word ‘paid’ scratched across them in that same confident hand. Sandy flips through them, fascinated, and looks uncomfortably around for the ghost, even though he hasn’t seen any sign of him since last night, when Sandy opened the desk.

Sandy takes the stack of papers out, thinking that perhaps he’ll take them down to the study to read, where it’s more comfortable and there’s more light, and shuts the desk’s lid. And it’s then that he notices the keyhole set under the lid. Curious, he slips the key inside and slides the drawer out.

There are a stack of letters, tied with a white satin ribbon with a sprig of desiccated lavender in the bow, the words “My dearest and best beloved Kozmotis” inscribed across the top in a delicate and curling script. There is a fountain pen and pencil set.

And there is a locket.

Sandy almost feels like he is the ghost as he reaches into the drawer and picks the egg-shaped silver pendant up, almost feels detached from his own body, no longer in control of his actions. The tarnished silver charm is heavy and cold against his palm, and he thinks of the faintest pressure of a cold, cold hand against his in the hazy grey darkness of the early, early morning and the warmth of an unexpected smile.

The locket is difficult to open, at first, its catch resisting Sandy’s chubby fingers. When at last he manages to pry it open, the hinge doesn’t seem to want to swivel, protesting quietly as Sandy tries to force it wide.

It yields at last, though, and Sandy finds himself looking in at tiny, time-darkened portraits of a woman, olive-skinned and fine-boned, her dark hair in ringlets hanging to her bared shoulders and her smile holding the faintest trace of mischief, and a girl, with a beaky nose that, Sandy realises, she would never have had the chance to grow into, and a warm, wide, genuine smile. This must be the wife and child so abruptly and cruelly murdered, left to be forgotten in dusty newspaper clippings and cut down to short paragraphs in half-forgotten books, and Sandy suddenly feels the weight of decades of sadness settle onto his shoulders and into his lungs, threatening to crush the breath out of him.

A sharp intake of breath behind him makes Sandy spin, and what he sees makes him drop the locket, reaching out instinctively. The ghost is staring down at the pictures, the look of horror that Sandy had seen before exaggerated into an almost comical look of grief.

"Kozmotis?" Sandy asks, thinking as he does that this is the first time he’s heard the ghost make a sound.

The ghost doesn’t seem to notice him, though. His attention has turned from the locket to himself, and for the first time, he seems to see the blood that soaks his front, that spatters both arms to the elbow and, when he raises his eyes to the mirror that Sandy had wiped clear, that marks his face. He almost seems to flicker as he stares as if transfixed at his own image.

And then he opens his mouth and gives a hollow scream, a sound that Sandy knows instantly could never be made by a living being, his cheeks hollowing and his eyes sinking deep into their sockets as a wail that resonates in Sandy’s bones and makes him fear for his eardrums pours out, rising in pitch and in volume until all the attic windows are rattling like they’ll shake themselves to pieces and dust spills from the rafters along with chunks of mortar. The floorboards start to dance under Sandy, and he snatches up the locket, trying to get to his feet. The light that illuminates the ghost seems to have vanished, leaving only the shadows, and those shadows are growing deeper, Sandy realises in a flash of pure terror. The ghost is between him and the door, even if he could move with the floor bucking like a bull under his feet, and oh, _god_ , there are shadows pouring out of every corner of the attic and speeding towards them -

"I’m sorry!" Sandy shouts, and the ghost’s mouth snaps shut, though the unearthly howl goes on. "I’m sorry you died, I’m sorry I brought it all back, I’m sorry you couldn’t save them, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ -“

Gleaming eyes in shadowed sockets regard him for a moment, and Sandy thrusts the locket towards the ghost, too worried about trying to keep his balance on the unsettled floor to notice or care how his hand shakes.

The howl cuts out, abruptly, leaving Sandy’s ears ringing in the sudden silence. The floorboards settle back into place, the windows calming, the shadows slowly starting to disperse.

The ghost reaches out, then draws his hand back. And then, with the saddest look that Sandy has ever seen him wear, he vanishes, taking the shadows with him.

Sandy is left standing alone, clutching a heavy, tarnished silver locket, streaked with dust and late-afternoon sunlight.

…

Sandy doesn’t see the ghost again for another week.

After the first day, he stops looking over his shoulder for the ghost to turn up and dives into his research in earnest, ignoring the electrician who calls him twelve times about getting a quote for the attic and the broker who calls him fifty-four times about selling stock in some tech startup that’s been underperforming. He digs and digs until, at last, he finds what he hadn’t even known he was looking for.

He checks and double-checks, against various sources, and, late that evening, he makes a phone call.

…

The car that pulls up to the door is long and black and looks old and well-cared-for. Sandy runs down the steps as the chauffeur steps out and swings open the passenger door. He offers his arm to the woman inside, and she takes it as though she’s doing _him_ a favour. Sandy and the chauffeur both help to get her out of the car and up on her feet, where she stands for a moment, staring up at the house that towers over them all with an unreadable expression on her withered face.

"I never wanted to see this place again," she says, and her voice is surprisingly strong for all her years, only the faintest quaver giving her away. Her hand tightens almost painfully on Sandy’s arm, and he winces.

"I know this must bring back bad memories," Sandy says, as he leads her to the door and helps her up the steps. "I just want to say thank you again for coming."

"I don’t see why you couldn’t have just brought the damn thing to me," the woman says. "You might have shown a little consideration for a fragile old lady. I’m a hundred and two, you know."

"I’m sorry," Sandy says, as he opens the door. "But you really needed to be here."

The woman sniffs, but lets him lead her through the entryway and help her off with her coat. “I don’t see why. I don’t care about any of these old things -“

"That isn’t why I called you," Sandy says, softly. "I’m afraid I’ve brought you here on false pretenses."

The old woman goes stiff, and Sandy crosses his fingers behind his back. If this goes wrong, he’ll have done worse than simply brought her here on false pretenses. But if this goes right -

"I’ve brought you here because your father needs to see you."

Silence fills the kitchen like afternoon sunlight.

"Young man," the woman says, and her voice is brittle and sharp as ice, "my father died that night, and it’s only through the grace of God and good luck with doctors that I didn’t die as well. This is not only a cruel trick, but -"

She stops, the words dying in her throat, and Sandy sees the moment that her eyes focus on something beyond him.

…

The house is vast, a real old Victorian mansion with white columns and gingerbread carvings gracing its lovingly restored facade. Returned to her former grandeur, fitted up with new wiring and plumbing and modern appliances, she is as majestic a lady as any.

When the realtor asks why Sandy put so much money into renovating it if he was only going to turn around and sell it a year later, Sandy only smiles sadly and says that he didn’t know he would be.

But it’s just much too much for only one person.


End file.
